


A Quartet of Oddly Colored Flowers

by Fantasyenabler



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Character of Color, Foursome, Het, Multi, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-11
Updated: 2010-03-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fantasyenabler/pseuds/Fantasyenabler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> Instead of the expected one mate, life gave Nyota Uhura three very different men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Quartet of Oddly Colored Flowers

Nyota swallowed before she spoke.  Y'Saboth could be a difficult language for a member of a species with only one larynx, but she didn't want to insult the vendor by relying on the universal translator.  "Four, please," she asked in the full-throated language.  "One in red, one in green, one in blue, and one in yellow, if you do not mind."

The vendor smiled, and Nyota allowed herself to exhale.  The intonations had sounded off to her, but apparently, the Klordny Festival put everyone in a forgiving mood.  More than forgiving actually, if the reverent way the vendor was selecting the flowers for her was any indication.  "You are blessed, child," he said, still smiling as he attached them to the hair combs for her.  "Such a lovely arrangement you have here."  He handed them off to her carefully, certain that she had a grip on them before accepting her credits.  "Tell me, would it be rude of me to ask what color you would be in this bouquet?"

The question wasn't rude, Nyota thought.  A little personal, but not rude, and really, it was nice to be able to say it to someone who hadn’t worked with her and thought her professional exterior was all that she was.  Who wouldn't turn around and ask, _Huh.  You?  Are you sure that priestess you visited was a real priestess and not some sort of mental defective?  _"Yellow," she said, stumbling over the word a bit. "Yellow," she repeated more smoothly.  "I'm the yellow one in this grouping."

If the vendor had smiled before, he beamed now.  "Compassion," he said, clasping his clawed hands together.  "How lovely."  He clapped his hands once in a Y'Saboth sign of respect before shooing her away.  "Go, child," he said.  "You have others waiting for you, and I will not keep you here while the moons set over the mountain.  Go, and have a pleasant evening, a pleasant life."

"Pleasant life to you too," she said, walking away with her wares.  She waited until she had covered a short distance before settling the yellow flower into her hair, not wanting the vendor to see and ask why one of her mates was not doing it.  She didn't want to tell him that she hadn't explained the significance of the flowers to any of the boys, that she planned to let them think this purchase was just a chance to indulge the part of her that was a cultural expert as well as a linguistic one.  She didn't want to tell anyone why she'd chosen to keep it a secret, why she didn't want to have to explain.

Instead, she poked at the yellow flower placed just above her ear and paused to look in a mirror in a clothing stall to make sure it was centered.  As she did, she was struck by how much she looked like her mother these days.  All she needed was for her hair to be corn rowed instead of straightened, and they would practically be twins.

She sniffed as the thought triggered a brief rush of homesickness.  She knew now how fortunate she was to have such a wonderful family.  When she was a child, they’d unconditionally loved her and supported her; when the time came to chase her dreams, they’d helped lift her up until she could practically touch the stars without the benefit of a spaceship.

And it had all come so naturally to everyone involved.  So much so that it never occurred to her that not everyone had the benefit of living in the heart of such love.

She touched the flower again.  _Compassion._  It was easy to be compassionate, she thought, when you’d had how lucky you were shoved into your face in the way she had.  Even easier when you’d been given the strength to not care what it said about you when you chose how and when you displayed your emotions and didn’t allow yourself to get pulled into others people’s concepts of “weak” and “strong.”

Or as her sister would say, “I refuse to bow to your stereotyped expectations of me.”  Just before smirking and adding, “In other words, back off, bitches.  You really don’t want to get in my way.”

She smiled at the memory, envisioning her sister’s face appearing beside her own in the mirror.  She touched the edges of the glass with a careful finger before turning and walking out of the stall.  

Now, she just had to find the others. 

That wouldn't be too hard.  A small group of Vulcans had come to Klordny to help ensure that their culture would not be forgotten.  Spock would be there, and where Spock was, the other two wouldn't be far.

Couldn't be far, really.

Hadn't been able to be for years now.

She brushed her fingers through the free-flowing strands of her hair, wishing she could brush the images that came with this set of memories away just as easily.

Instead, she gave them their moment and allowed them to flow. 

_Spock screamed, edges of hideous pain leaking into her thoughts.  A mind-meld gone wrong on Delos IV, and she tried her best to hold onto him, to let him anchor himself in her.  Unfortunately, having been his mate for a scattering of months didn’t make her a true telepath.  She wasn’t strong enough, and she was losing him..._

Desperately, she screamed at Jim and Bones.  "Help us.  Oh, God, help us!" 

And later in sickbay, she cried in horror at what she had wrought.  "I'm so sorry...I didn't realize...I'm so sorry."  
  
_Speaking of sickbay... _ She shook her head to clear her mind, not wanting to take the chance that any of those old emotions could be seen upon her face, before walking up on the dark-haired man sitting on a bench at the edge of the open display area.  "Well, here's one of you," she said, deliberately injecting a bit of lightheartedness into her tone.  "Where are the other two?  Still getting an update on how the settlements on New Vulcan are progressing?"

Bones leaned back and smirked at her, touching a finger to the tip of his nose as if to say, _Bingo!  _"I'd give you a prize, but that was an easy one," he said, the soft traces of Mississippi in his voice gliding over to her trained ears.  "You want one, you're gonna have to come up with an answer to a much harder question than that."

She smirked back at him as she sat down beside him.  "How fortunate then that I've already purchased my own," she said, placing two of the flowers on the end of the bench and keeping the blue one.  "One of the traditions being celebrated here this year is the custom of Y’Saboth females wearing flowers in their hair, one representing themselves and one for each of their mates."  She held it out to him.  "Do you mind?" she asked.  "I'd do it, but I already had a horrible time just making sure the yellow one was in there straight."

He rolled his eyes at her good-naturedly, but accepted the flower just as she knew he would.  _Generosity_ was the blue one, another one that might surprise people, given the doctor's gruff, put-upon exterior, the way he still griped about anything and everything possible.

But they hadn't seen what Nyota had.  _Loss.  Horrible loss after loss, all coming within years of each other.  A dead father, a dead daughter, an ex-wife who blamed him and hated him.  He'd finally gotten comfortable with the idea that his loving Jim wasn't going to make Jim disappear into an explosion-tinged puff of smoke._

And then she and Spock had forced him into having to share.

He had a right to be bitter.  To have demanded that they go to New Vulcan and do whatever it took to break the four of them apart.

He hadn't though.  After the initial upset they'd all felt, he'd accepted it as gracefully as possible, accepted that he had to not only be brave enough to let in one person, but three.

And so, blue.

"Isn't this a little girly for you?" he teased, as he adjusted the flower's hair comb with gentle hands, creating in Nyota's mind a memory that wasn't hers, of a chubby, pale-skinned little girl holding up a hair ribbon expectantly.  “Or should I take this to mean that the next time you and Jim go shopping, you’ll actually come back with more clothes than he does?”

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him in a mock death glare, the words _Just because you prefer him naked…_waiting on the tip of her tongue.

Then she heard the crunch of boots on the gravel path and grinned at Bones as she chose to change her tack.   “Buy more clothes than Jim Kirk?” she said in a volume calculated to only be heard by the three of them.  “That’s impossible.  Sometimes I think the only reason he stops is because Scotty complains about how beaming up all the packages overtasks the transporters.”

The crunching came to a stop a few feet behind her.  “Once,” a familiar voice said, and she heard his smile before she turned and saw it.  “It was just the once.”  Jim stood with his hands on his hips, trying his best to make his body language stern, in contrast to the traitorous amusement he couldn’t keep off his face.  “And I really don’t think it was that much.  I think he only said that because he’d been bribed to by some people who don’t appreciate my being on the forward edge of fashion.”

Bones snorted.  “You’re on the forward edge of something, all right,” he said as he got up off of the bench and closed the distance between him and Jim.  “The last time I looked though, I’m pretty sure it couldn’t be called fashion…”

Whatever else he’d been about to say was lost when Jim leaned in and kissed him.  “Are you saying you didn’t like what I bought the last time we went to Telos?” he asked, his hands resting on Bone’s shoulders, his face close to the other man’s.  “I seem to remember you liking the little show I put on that night.  Remember you liking it a lot actually.”    

Bones shook his head disgustedly and stepped away.  “Well, I see someone’s more delusional than usual today.”  He walked back over to where Nyota sat, briefly locking eyes with her conspiratorially before he asked, “Is that why you’re gracing us with your presence?  The Vulcans couldn’t take dealing with your fantasy life anymore and kicked you out?”

A second of silence answered his question and Nyota felt the smile on her face start to freeze.  “Um,” Jim began, his expression growing slightly sheepish.  “It wasn’t anything to do with my fantasy life.”  He kicked absently at a piece of gravel.  ”More like that one bastard cousin of Spock’s not knowing when to keep his mouth shut.”  The gravel skittered across the display area as his mouth drew into a grim line. “And, you know, maybe, possibly pissing me off a little with some of the comments he made.”

Nyota closed her eyes, not needing to ask Jim which cousin of Spock’s he was speaking of.  _So this is the female you married,_ she remembered Altek saying not so long ago.  _I suppose it was to be expected._  _Especially since T’Pring’s tragic demise meant you had no one to prevent you from emulating your father’s horrible example. _

The sense of someone standing close by caused her to open her eyes again.  Both Jim and Bones were there, Bones placing a light hand on her shoulder, as Jim knelt down before her.  “I’m sorry,” he said, blue eyes wide open in sincerity.  “I know I should have kept my mouth shut.  But…I just couldn’t…”

“It’s all right,” she said, choking back the painful memory to give him a brief smile.  “I understand why you couldn’t stand there and say nothing,” she added, as her fingers brushed the edge of the green flower still waiting on the bench.  _Loyalty_, she thought.  _Green was for loyalty.  _Jim Kirk had spent most of his life being shuttled back and forth between relatives who barely tolerated him, and a mother who faked a smile whenever she saw him.  It made sense then that he could come to think that no one would ever really want him, that affection and commitment were meaningless concepts, that bouncing from person to person was just the way he was meant to be.      

Then he met one person who convinced him he could stop bouncing and hold fast the way he’d always wanted to do.

Meeting two more right after that?  It just meant he had two more grounding points, two more connections to help him stay still. 

And Jim was fiercely protective of those connections.  So much so that Nyota couldn’t fault him for anything that he did in the name of defending any of them.

Even if it did mean he occasionally put her in a bit of a spot.  “I should go,” she said, motioning Jim away so she could rise to her feet.  “See if I can smooth things over somehow.”

The look Jim shared with Bones made it obvious that neither one of them approved of that idea.      

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.  “Boys,” she said, letting an edge of irritation creep into the word.  “It’s not that big of a deal.  I don’t care what Altek thinks about me.  But what I do care about is the trouble he can cause for Spock among what’s left of his people, understand?”

From the pensive twist to Jim’s mouth, she could see that he both did and _didn’t_ understand.  Any moment now, she expected him to start giving her some variation of _I fucked this up.  I should have to go deal with it._

Thankfully, when it came to restraining Jim’s impulsiveness, she had an ally.  “Jim, c’mon,” Bones said, reaching out and running his fingers along the back of Jim’s neck, before resting his hand right at its base.  “The man’s an ass, no disagreeing there, but you have to admit that other than that, he’s perfectly harmless.”  He sighed as he leaned in and rubbed his thumb along the edge of jaw just in front of Jim’s ear.  “Besides,” he added, “it’s not like this is the first time your communications officer has had to clean up something you said, and we both know it’s most likely not gonna be the last…”          

Jim turned and kissed him quickly, lightly, before nodding, to first him, and then to Nyota.  “All right,” he said, words underscoring the gesture.  “I get it.  You two don’t want me to go back and be a jerk and create even more trouble than I already have.” He took one of Nyota’s hands into his own.  “So I’ll be a good boy and stay away,” he said, kissing her palm in promise and then gently caressing it in apology. “Let you go do what you have to do to clean up my mistake.”

She smiled at him as she pulled back her hand.  “Well, I don’t know that I’ll be able to totally clean it up, but I’ll do my best.  Unfortunately, some asses just can’t be reasoned with.”

Bones shook his head and rolled his eyes at her remark.  “You got that right,” he said, lightly slapping Jim on the cheek as he stepped away from him, and then ignored the resulting glare.  “Of course, we have a saying back home: ‘That’s why man invented shovels.’”

She made sure he saw her roll her own eyes before kissing first him and then Jim in quick succession.  “See you two later,” she said, starting to move away, pausing when she suddenly remembered.  “Oh, wait.”  She grabbed the two remaining flowers and thrust them into Jim’s hands before turning away again.  “Watch over these for me, would you?” she called over her shoulder.  “I paid too much currency for them to lose them.”

“Sure,” she heard Jim sigh, as she walked away without looking back.  When she passed the far wall of the vendor three stalls down, she thought she heard laughter, and the unmistakable words of “Ha, ha.  You’re so not funny, Bones.”

She grinned as she detoured down an alleyway.      

Then sobered as she nearly ran into one of the people she was looking for.         

“Spock,” she said, closing the short distance between them, watching his face for those small signs most overlooked, but she saw plainly.  “What are you doing here?” she asked.  “I thought you’d still be talking with your cousin and the rest of the New Vulcan representatives.”

“I…”  The edges of his mouth quirked for a brief second.  “I do not know that it is worth mentioning…”

She cut him off with an incline of her head.  “Jim’s already told me about what happened between him and Altek,” she said calmly, hiding how the tiny amount of tightness around his eyes worried her.  “You can tell me exactly what occurred.  You don’t have to worry about my being angry with him.”

Spock shook his head.  “Jim was not the cause of my discomfort.  His outburst was actually quite civil given the circumstances.  It was my cousins and his companions who were being disturbing.”  He released a short exhale, the closest he ever came to a sigh.  “I was not appreciating many of the comments that were being said.  They seemed to have little place in our discussion about the settlements, yet for some reason, they continued.”  He canted his head slightly.  “I stated my objections shortly after Jim did, after he wisely chose to leave the pavilion, but unfortunately, my concerns were not heeded.  Rather, they were dismissed as being the result of my having had my thinking processes contaminated by continual exposure to unreasonable beings.”  He straightened his posture, lifting his head and stiffening his back.   “It was at that point that it became obvious to me that the entire point of that part of discussion was to provoke a response from me.  Therefore, I decided the best course of action was for me to no longer stay and provide them their opportunity.”

She laid her hand gently upon his arm, smiling sadly when he automatically covered it with his own.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “I am so, so sorry, Spock.”  _This is all my fault, _she thought. _All our fault.  If you weren’t with the three of us…_

She hadn’t intended for him to hear her thoughts, so she started when he rested a finger across her lips.  “Do not,” he said, placing his hand on her lower back, and bringing her closer. “Do not give credence to my cousin’s misconceptions about the wisdom of our actions.  We both know that if I were not with the three of you, then I would either be hopelessly insane or dead.  We also know that in any case, the matter is irrelevant.  We are all bonded.  The choice has been made.”

She wrapped her arms around him.  “Do you ever…” she began, biting her lip on what she wanted to say.  With anyone else, she might not have had the courage to put it into words.

But with Spock, she needed to.  Because if she didn’t, he would sense the question later, when their guards were down and their minds were open to each other.  And that would be far more painful to him, knowing that she’d wanted to ask this, but felt that she couldn’t.  “Do you ever regret joining us on the Enterprise?” she asked.  “Regret not going with your people, and passing up your chance to be a part of what they’re rebuilding?  Regret your chance to not expose yourself to situations that forced you to make choices they don’t understand?”

The tightening of his arms around her didn’t surprise her.  She knew he felt strongly about her and the others.  That was never in doubt here.

What did surprise her was the strength of the certainty she felt flowing out of him, flowing across their bond as fiercely as rushing water.  “Never,” he said, with his words, his hands, and his mind.  “Never,” he said again.  “I may regret the state of my relationship with my people, but I have never regretted the choice I made that day, nor the advice I followed.”  He backed away from her, touching her face with his fingertips.  His expression was not the earnest or fervent one she would have expected from a human, but it was heartfelt all the same.  “I have been incredibly fortunate.  Do not think that I ever consider myself otherwise.”

He clutched him to her, kissing her forehead, the side of her face, her lips.

He kissed her and she saw the color red, the color of the final flower in her arrangement, the most surprising one of all.

_Passion. _ The emotion he expressed upon her body time and time again, curbing its fiercest edges, but expressing it all the same.  What she felt in every touch, every embrace, every brush of his mind to hers.

Felt and treasured so deeply, so completely.

So much that she had worried the first time she’d shared him with the other two, afraid that they’d spread that passion too thinly among the three of them.

Hours later, when the four of them lay exhausted in bed together, she couldn’t stop laughing.

She should have known.  She truly should have known.

And now instead of just a pair of flowers, she held a small bouquet of them.

_A bouquet..._ “Spock,” she said, pulling back and trying to get him meet her eyes.  “Spock,” she said again, capturing his attention.  He locked gazes with her and she made sure to keep her concentration steady as she put her meaning into thoughts, feelings, and words.  “Let’s go home, Spock.  Let’s go home.”

He touched the flowers in her hair.  “Home,” he said, the tone of his voice no different than its usual neutral tenor, but somehow telling her that he saw what she wanted, that he saw both these flowers and the flowers she still needed to collect from Jim and Bones.  The pair who’d be waiting for them, anxious in their own individual ways to hear what else had happened.  “Home,” he repeated, as he kissed her palm exactly the way Jim had earlier.

He released her hand and gestured for her to precede him out of the alleyway.  “That sounds like a most acceptable course of action,” he said, one hand pointing forward, one hand pressed to the small of her back. 

That hand stayed there as they left the alley, as they passed the stalls and headed back towards the bench where she’d left the others.

Occasionally though, it would drift up to her hair.

She turned to him, her eyes telling him that he wasn’t getting away with anything.

His own eyes said that he never intended to, even as his mouth said, “I am most interested in seeing you with the completed hairstyle.”  Just before he brushed the petals of the yellow bloom with his fingers.

She shuddered.

Then shuddered again as she caught sight of the other two and thought about what the four of them were about to do.

Of course, not even Spock knew the full range of what she had in mind for the evening.  Flowers hadn’t been the only topic she’d researched this trip.

Oh, no, they most certainly weren’t.

She hid a grin as she and Spock advanced on the captain and the doctor.

All three of her boys were in for a big surprise.

Fin.

 

 

     

__

    

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] A Quartet of Oddly Colored Flowers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5699506) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




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